MattMcKeon

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• Commented on Spectacular slow card-flourishes from Dimitri Arleri
  The music sounds an awful lot like Qntal [example]. Tricks are OK, I suppose, but if you sample someone's music for a video it's only decent to give them credit....
• Commented on Ian McDonald's brilliant Mars book, DESOLATION ROAD, finally back in print
  Wow, OK, 3 ppl chiming in with Marquez' influence. heh...
• Commented on Ian McDonald's brilliant Mars book, DESOLATION ROAD, finally back in print
  Don't forget the heavy debt this book owes to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude. McDonald really nails the magical realist style here. It's a lovely book....
• Commented on Video: Jeff Bezos likes to laugh
  When I was an intern for Amazon you could always tell if he was having lunch in the cafeteria that day -- long before seeing him, you could hear his laugh halfway across the floor. I think it's awesome....
• Commented on Sita Sings the Blues to air in full on PBS
  Hmm, it's not on the schedule of my local PBS affiliate in Boston though. Sadly, no station is mentioned in the news post other than WNET in New York. Too bad!...
• Commented on Joel Stein: "Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention"
  According to scratch tests, I am severely allergic to every kind of nut, dairy, wheat, rice, and most fruits (except bananas). I eat and enjoy all of these things on a regular basis. Except bananas, which make me violently ill...
• Commented on Vodafone's 226 reviewed. Verdict: Awful, but you won't hate it
  hohum: Does the F3 have any sort of predictive entry for SMS? The F3 can do SMS, but it's just a bit better than banging rocks together (limited character set, only 12 characters visible at a time). If you're a...
• Commented on Who'll pay $550 for the Treo Pro?
  My wife just bought a Centro and loves it; she has a keyboard AND she can use all of her favorite software from her old Palm. Sadly, I'm quite certain that PalmOS is on life support. They've dropped support for...
• Commented on Deal: Apple 12" iBook G4 for $349
  I will weep bitter tears when my 12" Powerbook G4 finally dies. It's slow sometimes (867 Mhz), burns my thighs and has a broken latch, but it's an unbelievably sturdy, lightweight and versatile little Netbook That Could. I dropped it...
• Commented on Tell me about making a tiny 900 MHz antenna
  Good luck. I'm told that antennas in that frequency range are quite finicky. I've rolled my own for hi-freq RFID (13.56 MHz) and it was a pain. I know that once you get up to UHF (which 900 Mhz is...
• Commented on Analyst: RadioShack to emulate Apple Stores
  Yeah, I too am grateful for Radio Shack's presence and would be quite sad if they closed down completely. Sometimes I just need a particular component RIGHT NOW and there's literally nobody else who carries them in a 50-mile radius....
• Commented on Count calories and wake up to FM radio with Sony Ericsson's new cheapies
  I could fall in love with such a minimalist machine; if only it were not as thick as a candybar. You really ought to drop $34 at Amazon on a MOTOFONE then. :) I've been using this as my backup...
• Commented on Spy sunglasses not likely to be in Bond's arsenal
  As far as I can tell, the target market for both this (creepy ThinkGeek product page notwithstanding) and the Oakley Thump are snowboarders and skiiers....
• Commented on Amazon's Kindle now in-stock, practically for the first time ever
  Can it properly handle PDFs yet? One of the showstoppers for me on its release was its reported shoddy (or nonexistent) handling of PDF content. It would be lovely to avoid printing out a stack of research papers every time...
• Commented on Introducing BBG's Band Manager: Marvin Battelle
  Marvin, old bean! I haven't seen you for years! I thought that once Chet and Erik got jobs you'd skulked off to whatever you post-singularity reality construct originally squeezed you out. Good to see you again, although I must admit...
• Commented on West Virginia railroad culture: photos by Kevin Scanlon
  My grandfather was a railroad engineer out of Dubois, PA. That part of the Appalachias is still, to me, some of the most beautiful country in the US. Gently rolling hills of endless woodland, stippled with granite outcrops and the...
• Commented on Hamster's Lunch at Coco's in Los Angeles
  I'm not at all a Microsoft hater, but this is getting ridiculous guys. Comments sponsored by HP. Categories sponsored by Honda. Posts sponsored by Microsoft. Boing Boing looks like a frigging NASCAR, and it's a big turnoff for me. I...
• Commented on Galactic Civilizations II: big budget game, no DRM
  Second this -- Gal Civ 2 is a great game, and one I had never heard of until last month. There's a hilarious GC2 diary from PC Gamer here, and Rock Paper Shotgun weighs in with a typically insightful take...
• Commented on 15 Things I Just Learned About the Amazon Kindle
  No PDF (even DRM-free PDF) == fail. I was excited about the wireless capabilities, and while the price is high it's still within range. I guess I sort of understand why Amazon doesn't want to support PDFs (I'm sure that...